They did that on their flagship card, and also it wasn't the most common thing to do back then. To be honest, the graphics card has gotten so powerful in comparison with most games that its pointless to keep on redesigning new chips, a simple rebrand would suffice most of the time.

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No they didn't, they didn't once rebrand their flagship card. And yeah, it was just as common back then, its been going on since the ATI Rage days.

But yes, I agree with you, and have since before the nVidia rebrands came to light. It is pointless in today's economy to design mid-range chips when rebranding the higher end chips from last generation give you essentially the same thing.

But from 8800 GT to 9800 GT there was no change at all. One of the lamest things I've ever seen.

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At least nVidia had good reason. They released the 8800GT expecting that ATi would keep the HD2900 series naming when they released the revised R600 cores. But when ATi threw everyone for a loop by naming the revised R600 as the next generation naming, it made nVidia's products look bad from a marketting standpoint since they still appeared to be in the previous generation while ATi had moved on to the next generation(even if it was really the same generation at heart). So nVidia really had no choice in renaming the 8800GT and moving on to the next generation.

Renaming isn't that lame, anyone should be able to look up specs and reviews regardless of the name, and know what they are buying before they buy it. And really, most of the time, with a rebadge the product that would have had to have been designed from scratch to fall into that name's spot in the line-up would have been very similar(sometimes even worse) than the rebadged card is/was.

If you want to look at the lamest things ever, look at the cards that were released with one specification and then after the reviews were done and the dust from the release settled the specs were crippled without any name change or even a whisper about it. Now that is lame. Because then it makes even doing proper research hard for the average buyer. They can't just look at benchmarks for the card, they have to make sure they are looking at the right card version, if they can even tell. And most of the time, the benchmarks are for the original version of the card and benchmarks for the revised version are very hard to find.

No need to actually make the HD 76xx any better than the HD 66xx...
There hasn't been any revolutionary improvement in graphics standards implementation, yet; blame console stagnation.
But they needed to fill in a performance segment in the 7000 series, so rebrand; marketing.

Come on people. Third generation DX11 cards... any improvements are not going to be major performance enhancements, aside from increases due to die shrinks. Because of that, also, rebranding of lower end stuff shouldn't be surprising.

The original 8800 GT, well, it became the 9800 GT. Then they overclocked the 8800 GTS and it turned into the 9800 GTX. Now this made sense, but only if you ignored the whole this was an 8800 GT to begin with thing.

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and what about the GT440? review had 1 version , retail was crippled...

The 8800GTS and 9800GTX were very different cards. The cores were the same, but they were very different cards. And in fact the 9800GT was supposed to be very different from the 8800GT as well, but the AIB Partners forced nVidia to stick with the 8800GT design. The 9800GT was supposed to be Tri-SLI capable and hybrid power capable with a new PCB. But the AIB Partners bitched and moaned and flat out refused to use the new PCB, forcing the 9800GT to turn into nothing more than a rebadge.

Besides Tri-SLI, the 4+2 PWM of the 9800GTX compared to the 3+1 of the 8800GTS meant the 9800GTX usually hit clock speeds 15-20% higher than the 8800GTS. And there is a very minor addition of the SPD/IF connector to allow audio to be passed through to HDMI.

So, yes, those that actually used the cards and aren't relying on a single article they read for their knowledge will tell you the two are very different cards.

I think that AMD is trying to increase the gap between the x600 and x700 series but naming it 7670 gives very little room for new cards if nVidia comes out with something better at the $100 price point. They should have re-named it 7630 or something.

Anyway, a 6670/7670 with 1GB GDDR5 is good for pretty much anything at lower resolutions.

I don't like re-branding but there are times where it's just good use of engineering and little marketing.

But this time... Why write off this new <75W (no 6-pin) 28Nm out of the mix! A 28Nm of the 6670 DDR5 with a little boost in clocks could've produced a really nice card. I really thought AMD would've use such a card in conjunction with the Trinity APU. Sell (cheap) OEM boxes with APU’s with their design mobo, and then have Hybrid C-F with a 7670 in the aftermarket. Why would AMD miss-out on that scenario? It’s like they caved to OEM’s… for what? It makes no sense!

AMD had that as an Ace in the hole, a upgrade card and that would have Nvidia/Intel sucking big wind. I see it as AMD was in the driver’s seat, move APU/mobo (and their ram) as a package on the cheap, a win for both. The OEM's get to entice buyers with better then GMA Craphics at great price, all the OEM had to bestow to AMD was a a quality 350W PSU! I mean a card in Hybrid C-F that provided GTX550ti performance in a plug and play package.

So, what now you get to sell the 7670 to OEM's so they can put them in Intel boxes... Rory you need to let go of more marketing guru's... or maybe that's who and why folk got the axe? The only thing I could think of was AMD made it buy the 7670 and FX-6100 as a package?

The last Nvidia card with great performance and low power was the GT240 GDDR5’s, since Fermi they haven’t done anything in this part of the market.

amazing - even TPU says the 8800GTS and 9800GTX are the same card bar tri sli (and cooler design - which GTS cards used different ones as well)

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Actually, right on the page you linked to it says the PCB and Cooler are different, and Tri-SLi, and Hybrid-power, Purevideo HD Improvements, the higher clock speeds, then on top of that there is the higher overclock potential which isn't mentioned until the overclocking section(thanks to the PCB), and the SPD/IF connector which isn't mentioned at all.

I don't see anywhere where it says they are exactly the same bar Tri-SLi. Care to point it out?

The X600 series is supposed to be AMD's flagship card for low power users. No 6 pin connector/great performance. This is VERY disappointing, I wanted to pick up a high end 28nm video card that I was going to use on a lighter system I will be working on, now I might as well get a 6670.

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Perhaps it will once the 28 nm process matures and has better yields. Now it seems a waste of good moneymaking opportunity to not use this production process for high performance segment (which commands largest profit margins) exclusively, at least until Nvidia comes up with something competitive of their own and starts a price war.

The X600 series is supposed to be AMD's flagship card for low power users. No 6 pin connector/great performance. This is VERY disappointing, I wanted to pick up a high end 28nm video card that I was going to use on a lighter system I will be working on, now I might as well get a 6670.

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The new flagship card for low power users is the 7750.

And the 7670 is strictly for OEM market, so most customers wont even know about this card.

At least the AMD does not release different cards with the same name(see GT630 or GT640m-LE)